Honey Grove Lodge No. 164, A. F. & A. M.

The Masons who sought a Honey Grove dispensation in 1854 belonged to a fraternity with unusual weight in Texas. The Handbook of Texas says the Grand Lodge of the Republic of Texas formed in December 1837 with Anson Jones as first grand master, and chartered twenty-one more lodges by 1845. Masons were about one and a half percent of the Republic's population yet filled roughly 80 percent of its higher offices. By 1860 Texas had 226 active lodges and 9,000 members, and Honey Grove's, chartered in 1856, belonged to that growth.

What the plaque says

Honey Grove Lodge No. 164, A. F. & A. M. Granted a dispensation by the Grand Lodge of Texas in 1854, the Honey Grove Masonic Lodge was officially chartered in 1856. Early meetings were held in the attic of the old Smith Hotel on the town square and on the second floor of the Walcott School Building. In 1914 the Lodge moved to a building on N. 6th Street shared with the newspaper office. After it burned in 1955, the Lodge and newspaper built adjacent structures at this site. The Lodge facilities are shared by four Masonic organizations, which support many programs in Honey Grove. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 18 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 21 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 21 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 22 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Honey Grove City Hall — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Honey Grove — steps away
• Main Street Presbyterian Church — steps away
• Dial Home — 0.2 mi